The present study demonstrates that manual declawing has a major detrimental impact on fitness and welfare of edible crabs and we suggest that this method of harvesting should be replaced with induced autotomy of a single claw.

Caudal autotomy describes the process whereby many reptiles lose or drop a part of their tail due to predator attack or spontaneous contraction of tail muscles (Bateman and Fleming 2009; Wilson 2012; Cogger 2014).

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